Sports games look to be going the same route as Movie tie-in games: rushed, budget titles with just a hint of potential shining through. Someone at developer Eurocom worked hard on Vancouver 2010 but unfortunately is rarely shows.

Not Olympic Material

One thing every sports game should have is some form of career mode, especially a game based around the Olympic Games. This is where Vancouver 2010 first crosses its skis and tumbles to the finish line. Vancouver 2010 consists of 2 game modes, 3 if you count the training mode. The first game mode is called “The Olympic Games”, a title which would lead one to believe that an epic tournament of Olympic proportions awaits the player. Alas, this is not the case.

The player is prompted to choose whether to play on his/her console, play system link with another console, play an Xbox Live Player Match or play an Xbox Live Ranked Match.  The player is then asked to choose one of 24 countries, out of the official 82 countries competing in the games, before selecting the event in which to “compete”. There are 14 events to choose from though these 14 events are picked from only 4 of the 15 Winter Olympic disciplines. For example there is Downhill Skiing but men’s only. Why was the women’s Downhill Skiing event left out? Similarly the biathlon is also absent. The biathlon combines cross country skiing with rifle shooting, 2 things that could translate quite nicely into a video game. This result is 14 events which will keep the player occupied no more than 10 minutes at a time and once it’s done the player is unceremoniously booted back to the event selection screen.

It is here where the lack of any career mode really hurts Vancouver 2010. Had the developer allowed the player to choose a team and then leading them to Olympic glory through each of the events, complete with records kept of each medal won or lost, we may have had a game on our hands. Since there is no such feature the entire “Olympic Games” feels like nothing more than a bunch of loose events held together by only a selection screen.

Honourable Mention

As said in the opening paragraph of this review someone in Eurocom’s development team worked hard on this title, and occasionally it shows. The visuals are sharp and the character models are well defined, complete with overjoyed or truly devastated facial expressions, depending of course on whether the player won gold or messed up his/her landing and ragdolled over the finish line. The design of the events are also well done with lots of effort put into making the player feel like they are actually in the event.

The Second game mode is a Challenge mode which is actually rather well conceived even though some of the challenges have absolutely zero relevance to the Winter Olympics other than the event.

There are 3 mountains to unlock; Easy Mountain, Intermediate Mountain and Advance Mountain. Even though they won’t be winning any clever name awards each of the mountains offer enough of a challenge to extend the play time of this title by a few hours, something it desperately needs.

Some of the individual events will keep the player coming back multiple times to get that perfect triple backwards corkscrew in the woman’s aerial or shaving off those crucial seconds in the men’s downhill to finally beat those dammed Czech’s, while others will have the player cursing in frustration at the lack of imagination with some of the control schemes.

Bronze is better than nothing, right?

Some hard work did go into Vancouver 2010 and some of the events are truly enjoyable, even if just for the 1:14 it will take the player to reach the finish line. It is a shame that most often the Challenge mode, which feels like something out of Mario & Sonic at the Winter Olympics (Yes that is an actual title), is what carries this title. Had the time and effort spent creating the challenges been spent on developing some sort of career mode, or something with a bit of depth,  Eurocom might have taken home the gold instead its going home with a bunch of cheap flowers and a handshake.